Do you remember that radio contest a few years ago on 98.7 KISS FM? Well, I won it. I was the 98^th caller and I won a trip back in time to have a date with a dead person. This was the prize for the radio contest.

And guess who I chose to have it with? When I called the radio station, I didn’t think I would win, I was on hold forever. I was wearing my lucky T-shirt (and I’m wearing it right now), and then the guy picked up, the radio guy, to tell me I had won. And then he asked me where and when I wanted to go and I said THE EAST VILLAGE IN THE LATE 1980s, but I was standing next to my radio boombox, and he put me on the air and all I heard was feedback, and I closed my eyes, and my wish was granted, and I was sent back in time for one night only, sundown to sun-up, to have a date with David Wojnawrowicz. It was dusk, and I waited outside an apartment on East 8^th Street for David Wojnarowicz to come pick me up for our date. He was wearing a jean jacket and a dirty gray T-shirt. He was sooo cute. He asked me what I wanted to do, on our date, and I told him that I mostly just wanted to talk. He let me bum his cigarettes, which I thought was really gallant; I had come back in time without any of my own. We stopped to buy something to drink, and I bought him a pack of cigarettes to replace the ones I had taken – it was less than a dollar! Everything was so cheap.

We opened our beers and drank them walking down the street. Just a couple of guys. Just two people talking to each other. About New York, about moving to New York. About making art. It was, this part, a dream come true. I feel like David Wojnarowicz is a kind of celebrity, to me and my friends and a lot of queer people. And we all adore him. He’s an icon, but it’s not enough, you know? I want, at least, for him to be a real person too, so I feel lucky to be able to confirm that this is true.

He was really tall. Taller than me, and almost nobody is taller than me. That, combined with the difference in our ages and his success, made me feel kind of intimidated. (He kind of name-dropped the Whitney Biennial, like, “Have you ever been uptown to the Whitney?” And I didn’t want to say, “Duh.”) 

He asked me if I thought it was easier to be a queer person where I’m from, in the future, than it was to be a queer person in the late 1980s. I said definitely. By a lot. I couldn’t even imagine, I said, to be honest.

“What do you mean you can’t imagine?”

“Oh, easy.” I said. “I just like, can’t. I can’t picture it.”

We walked down Christopher Street and sat by the river and watched guys go by. He was checking them out really slyly. Mostly beefy dudes. I got the distinct impression that I wasn’t David’s type, and I felt sort of hurt. He wasn’t my ideal type either, but I felt a tremendous simpatico with him and wanted it to be reciprocal. But I remembered that this is the trick that history plays on you.

He eyed a shirtless guy with a buzz cut and a tan. He turned to me and asked me what kind of guys I liked, what my type was.  I said “All types I guess,” and he said, “Hm.” He nodded to the guy he was checking out and asked if I thought he was attractive. I said not really and he didn’t say anything, just watched him walk away. So I knew he didn’t think I was cute. On one hand I definitely wanted to fall in love with David Wojnarowicz, but on the other hand I kind of felt relieved that the pressure was off. I didn’t feel like such a disappointment; I just wasn’t his type. We watched the sun set behind the skyline of New Jersey. It felt, to me, abundantly clear that I was not going to be able to seduce him.

He seemed genuinely surprised to hear me tell him how much his work meant to me and how much of a big deal he was to people where I’m from. I didn’t think he was fishing for compliments when he raised his eyebrows and asked “Really?” I didn’t want to overdo it, but how often to you get the chance to go back in time and talk to one of your heroes? I felt this deep-seated desire to make it known to him how important he was to me.

I told him that even in 2015, people fucked up the pronunciation of his name. I thought it was funny, or that he might think it was funny. He didn’t. I realized I sounded snobby. To him, it just sounded like I was making fun of his name. Fuck. I was blowing it. I told him that it was still hard to be queer, but that the problems seem really different. I told him that gay people could get married in New York in 2015. That surprised him. He had a beautiful smile. 

I said I really like his band, 3 Teens Kill 4, and I ask about their show at Wigstock the previous year. He says it went okay and asks if they still do Wigstock in 2015. Sometimes, I say, but not regularly. Lady Bunny is a big star. Still.

People kept coming up to us to say hi. I thought maybe they all knew him, because he was such a big deal, but it was just queer people being friendly. They weren’t like gay people today. Today, if queer people just approach me and my friend and start talking to us, I personally assume they have some ulterior motive, they want to fuck us or something. But that night, people just stopped to say hello. Gay strangers. This one really hilarious queen with long brown hair and a cute fake English accent asked us if we wanted to get high, and we did, and everything became a blur. We spent a few hours lying on our backs, staring up at the cloudy night sky. The moon and the stars were up there and would stay up there until 2015 when I’d see them. They weren’t visible that night, but I knew they were there. Eventually the cruising crowds thinned out, and David offered to walk me back to my apartment.

On a whim, as a last chance type of thing, I asked him to come up to my room with me, and he looked away kinda shyly and said no, that he had a lot of work to do and besides, I was leaving in the morning. I thought it was really sweet. I wanted to have sex with him, so that I could know what kind of sex he liked to have. Like was David Wojnarowicz a top? Was that even a thing then? Is that weird to ask? I know he was really into blowjobs. But who isn’t into blowjobs. I wanted to know specifically what turned him on, what he liked to do in bed, but now I will have to ask around, which isn’t the same.

I had gone back with a mental list of things I wanted to discuss with him and things I wanted to say, and I realized that I totally blew it. All the things I wanted to discuss with David Wojnawrowicz, I had barely gotten to any of them. I didn’t even talk to him about the Internet. 

I wanted to say a ton of really stupid stuff, too, like “I’m sorry” and “Thank you” and “I love you”. The biggie was, you know, “Thank you for sewing your mouth shut (and letting us see).” I don’t know if I could have said that, though, looking him in the face, without crying. We walked in silence back to the building where he’d drop me off, and we’d both disappear. I knew it was coming, and my mind was racing and I wanted to prove that he had made me possible. That my existence was predicated on his. I was able to move using muscles he had discovered. How should I say it? A picture? Words? I get to make these choices because of him. The whole premise of getting stoned and calling an FM radio station to win a trip back in time to cruise guys with David Wojnarowicz is a function of the freedom he afforded me. So how could I possibly say thank you?

Photo: Artnews